Damien G Walter reminds me that tomorrow is Support Our Zines Day. Before Gary Farber gets annoyed again I should point out that in this particular case Damien just means fiction magazines such as Clarkesworld that need funds to keep paying their authors. There are lots of them, and many of them are listed on the Save Semiprozine web site.
The basic idea of SOZD is that on that day everyone is encouraged to donate some money to their favorite ‘zine. Take out a subscription, click the donate button or whatever. For those of you on Facebook, here is the Event page.
And if you should happen to feel like donating to Clarkesworld, you can do so here.
Update: Those of you who don’t like the idea of small press magazines asking for money might like to read this post by Amanda Palmer. I think she’s right. Artists of all types have to make a living. I’d far rather see my money going more or less directly to them than most of the cash being siphoned off by distributors, retailers and multi-national publishers. For goodness sake let’s get away from this ridiculous classist idea that art is something that the upper classes do for love and no one should ever ask money for.
If you think the World of Science Fiction has it bad on trying to get people to support the Small press, the world of Anime (especially in North America) has it worst. Fansubs are very big in North America (and I believe Britain). We have a generation of anime fans who aren’t buying DVD’s or digital downloads and that scares me as to the future of the art. If an artform isn’t profitable doing it’s best work, then it will do whatever it takes to survive (even if it means becoming a cut scene place for Video games).
I forgot to mention that a note will be in front of my desk tonight to remind me to support Clarksworld tomorrow.
I completely agree with your update, and I’m all for people supporting zines of any type (well, other than racist or Nazi or similarly repugnant zines) with money and any and every other kind of support.
I simply note that “zines” doesn’t mean “sf/fantasy fiction zines,” and what’s being called for by “Support Our Zines Day” isn’t actually “support our zines” unless the stress is on a very specific and exclusionary meaning of “our.”
Which is going to confuse all the tens of thousands of people who do other kinds of zines, and the hundreds of thousands of people who read other kinds of zines, if they run across this endeavor.
Ditto that in an sf/fantasy community context, we’ve had fanzines, also commonly spoken of simply as “zines,” since 1930, and an awful lot of people in the skiffy community are apt to think “zines” means “fanzines,” which are typically available for “the usual,” have relatively little fiction, and otherwise aren’t what Damien G Walter seems to have in mind when he calls for “Supporting Our Zines.” Although, in fact, until this past year, all the zines ever nominated for a Hugo don’t fall under “supporting our zines.”
Which seems a bit weird to me.
So I do think a more specific, accurate, nomenclature would lend tremendously greater clarity. It’s not all that different from having “Support Our Written Matter Day” when, in fact, all you mean is “support our zines that publish sf/fantasy fiction.”
I’m not annoyed; I’m just placed here on earth to increase clarity and specificity; it’s a heavy burden, but one I attempt to do with joy and the aid of puppies and kittens everywhere.
Dear Cheryl,
I hope this is a right place but I didn’t know how else to let you know. I was trying to make donation through Revolution MoneyExchange, but it won’t work. I’ve tried several times in a last few days, but it’s not working. When I fill in the fields and click “Enter” I get this error message (in a pop-up window):
On page
“Error occured while processing your request, try again later”
So just to let you know. I’ll try again later or use PayPal instead.
I’m enjoying your blog a lot!
Thank you.
Terhi (from Finland)